


Evicted

by kawada_s



Series: Main Universe [7]
Category: Battle Royale - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-20 05:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9478271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawada_s/pseuds/kawada_s
Summary: The Kiriyama family are evicted from their clubhouse. A story about loss, using what you have, and starting anew.





	1. Chapter 1

Evicted 

Sho Tsukioka could not believe what he was seeing, but no matter how many times he attempted to convince himself that he was having a weird dream he was struggling to wake up from or was in the wrong place, the sign on the door stayed perfectly in place. It was an eviction notice. An _eviction notice_. The Kiriyama family had been evicted from their clubhouse, as Hiroshi and Ryuhei had lamely called it. The _Kiriyama family…_ evicted?! It didn’t seem possible, but here it was, in writing, right in front of him.

He should have expected it, as they should have been evicted months ago… but he didn’t think it would actually happen. Kazuo would take care of it, he had figured. No one would evict the Kiriyama family. They were untouchable. He wondered if he was the first to have discovered this, or if Kazuo had come by earlier and was already planning out the next move. He’d know what to do, for sure.

In the meantime, before he jumped to conclusions and sent off frantic message after frantic message to the Kiriyama family group chat, he decided he would take a minute to think over the situation rationally. If Kazuo hadn’t seen the notice yet and he managed to solve the problem himself, Kazuo-kun would just _have_ to be impressed with him, right?

Sho ripped the notice off the door, trying his best to keep it intact and ignore the urge to tear it to shreds. He took it downstairs, and immediately walked up to the woman sitting behind the front desk.

“Excuse me?” Sho began, sliding the eviction notice over to her, getting her attention. “What exactly _is_ this supposed to be?”

“An eviction notice,” the woman said, letting out a sigh. It was obvious she thought Sho was the biggest idiot in the world, but he attempted to ignore this fact for the moment and try and remain polite. “It was put on the door several days ago, and we notified the person whose name the rental was in, but no one showed up.”

No one really knew how Kazuo had managed to rent the place, not even Mitsuru, he had just shown up with the paperwork one day when Hiroshi was complaining about how lame it was to hang out in their previous ‘clubhouse,’ a grimy burger restaurant, and told him that since he had objected to the clubhouse location, he would be responsible for the finances. Everyone knew that it would go up in flames eventually, and were surprised it had actually lasted five whole months.

It made sense that Kazuo hadn’t noticed they’d been evicted yet. He barely ever used his phone. He only had one because Mitsuru bought him one, and he usually either left it at home or kept it tuned off, seeing no use for it. Mitsuru had set him up on social media, but he never used that unless he sent a message to the group chat, which was quite rare. Unless you saw him in person or got to catch him on the rare times he had his phone on and with him, he was impossible to contact.

“We can pay the rent,” Sho insisted. He’d make sure Hiroshi came up with the money somehow – even if the idiot had to sell everything he owned, he’d do it. Hiroshi would have to make it right, otherwise he would never hear the end of it again. “We’ll work something out. I know what to do already. This is all just a mis-“

The woman just sighed, cut him off, and slid the eviction notice back to Sho.

“Sorry, sir. We’ve already rented the place out to new tenants. You can find your belongings at the end of the hallway. They will be disposed of in the next few days if they are not removed from the premises.”

Sho nodded at her and was about to protest or demand to know who would _dare_ rent the Kiriyama family’s clubhouse when of course they would eventually come up with the money for the rent, but decided against it at the last minute. While the circumstance was undesirable, he wasn’t going to let himself look pathetic. With a glare directed at the woman, he turned around and balled up the eviction notice, throwing it on the ground before going to start sorting through his and the Kiriyama family’s belongings.

Just as promised, the pile of their belongings was arranged at the end of the hallway. When he noticed that the curtains he so carefully picked out for the place were ripped beyond repair, he immediately began to get angry. It only seemed to get worse from there. The chairs he’d bought had been broken. The only ones that had survived were the ones that Ryuhei and Hiroshi had stained at Christmas, so they were ruined in their own way. Kicking them aside, he began to grab things that looked important from the pile. If he salvaged Kazuo-kun’s things, he’d just _have_ to be noticed.

As he stuffed one of Kazuo’s jackets in his bag, he heard a familiar voice close by.

“M-Mitsuko, Hirono? Help…” Yoshimi whined, Sho turning around to see her struggling with a large pile of boxes. He quickly noticed that Mitsuko and Hirono were carrying nothing, save for their bags slung over their shoulders.

“You’re almost in the door,” Mitsuko simply said, disappearing into the Kiriyama family’s former ‘clubhouse,’ Hirono following. Yoshimi whined and was ignored again, dumping the boxes on the ground with a loud sigh of relief.

“Wait… _you three_ are the ones who rented our place?!” Sho said in absolute disgust. He had made friends with Yoshimi, and Hirono had given him a good laugh on the afternoon she’d become the class meme, but he didn’t think much of Mitsuko, and the thought of their group in Kazuo-kun’s territory filled him with anger and annoyance.

“Well, it isn’t your place anymore,” Mitsuko called out from inside. She came out for a moment to finally grab a few boxes that had landed on the ground, then was gone again.

“Oh, Sho,” Yoshimi smiled, oblivious to her friend’s frustration. “Hi! Do you want to come in?”

“YOSHIMI! STOP BEING LAZY AND UNPACK!” Mitsuko yelled out from where she was lying on the floor, Hirono sitting next to her. “Tsukioka, don’t even _think_ bout coming inside.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to,” Sho snapped, and turned back to the Kiriyama family’s belongings. Yoshimi mumbled an apology, then ran inside to start unpacking. When the door shut and the lock clicked, Sho finally fully accepted the situation – they had been evicted. Their ‘clubhouse’ was gone, occupied by someone else, and by people they couldn’t intimidate out of it either. Worst of all… they didn’t even have a ‘clubhouse’ anymore!

Sho pulled out his phone, wasting no time sending off texts to the Kiriyama family group chat. It was time to panic.

 

The next day of school for the Kiriyama family consisted of classwork which was mostly ignored, panicking, insults being thrown at Hiroshi, which was followed by punches being thrown back and forth by Ryuhei and Hiroshi, and by the end of the day, it seemed like no progress had been made. However, to the group’s surprise, about give minutes before they were all dismissed for the day, they all received a text from Hiroshi.

 **Hiroshi Kuronaga:**  I’ve solved the clubhouse situation.

While all of them, save for Kazuo, were rather curious about what Hiroshi had managed to come up with, they decided to wait and talk to him in person about the new arrangement when class was over. To their annoyance, Hiroshi would not answer any of their questions, and instead said that they would find out what he had arranged for them when they got there. Seeing as they had nothing else to do, they followed.

Hiroshi stopped in the middle of a field close to their school, and held his arms out in triumph.

“A field…” Mitsuru frowned. “You bought the Boss to a _field?”_

“What are we supposed to do with a field?!” Sho complained. “How can you make a field look nice?!”

“It is a rather impractical place to meet,” Kazuo said. Ryuhei immediately began to laugh at Hiroshi being shot down by the Boss, but stopped once Mitsuru stomped on his foot, not wanting to miss a single word Kazuo had to say. “What will we do in wet weather? Whatever possessions we place out here will be ruined, and we could possibly become ill.”

“Yeah, Hiroshi,” Ryuhei snorted in laughter. Hiroshi elbowed him hard in the side, which they proceeded to return back and forth while Kazuo took some time to think of where they could meet next. He wouldn’t rent another building. It would probably only lead to another eviction, and it was not a situation he would like to repeat.

“Over there would work,” Kazuo pointed to a small, abandoned shelter area towards the side of the field. When the field had been used for sports days several years ago, it had served as a small café, but he doubted anyone would be coming back to use it again.

“Brilliant idea, Boss,” Mitsuru smiled at Kazuo as he followed them over to the shelter. He tried to ignore the sound of Sho mimicking his words behind him.

Kazuo looked around at the abandoned café, and decided it would be an adequate meeting place. Sho was quite horrified at the state of the place and had absolutely no idea what he could do to make the place look presentable, let alone _fancy,_ but tried to tell himself he could at least attempt to make a miracle happen. He frowned when his eyes landed in one of the corners of the shelter, where he saw Kyoichi Motobuchi hunched over a notebook, doing his homework.

“Hey, nerd,” Ryuhei shuffled over to him, Kyoichi giving him a glare. “This is our place now. Beat it.”

Not in the mood to get in an argument, especially with a group of people that would no doubt crush him once they got sick of hearing his voice (which wouldn’t take long), Kyoichi let out a sigh, carefully put his book back in his bag, and stalked off.

“All I want is one quiet place. ONE. ONE. Is that too much to ask?!” Kyoichi ranted across the field. No one cared at all, and went upon business as usual.

Kazuo found a relatively clean part of the shelter and took a seat, taking a book out of his bag, some non-fiction monstrosity that would probably bore any other member of the Kiriyama family to tears, and began to read. Sho knew better than to bother Kazuo-kun, but knew that in the meantime, he could try and take initiative and get the place looking nice for him.

“So, who wants to help me clean up this place?”

Suddenly, everyone else had plans.

 

Sho worked all afternoon and even through the night to get the new clubhouse looking as pleasant and fancy as it possibly could. He went out and bought paint, rugs, new chairs, a few decorations for the walls, and immediately got to work, finishing it off by neatly putting away the items he’d managed to salvage from the hallway of their old building. It was still nowhere near as nice as their old place, but it was definitely not _ugly._

Ryuhei arrived at the first meeting at the new clubhouse late, to find everyone already there, sitting in a circle in the new chairs Sho had bought. They were fluffy and pink, and had everyone’s names printed on the back of them. Kazuo sat with Mitsuru and Sho on either side of him, with Hiroshi next to Sho. Neither Mitsuru or Sho wanted Hiroshi next to him, but as second-in-command, Mitsuru had won the battle and told Sho to just suck it up.

“What the fuck is this?” Ryuhei frowned, pointing a finger accusingly at both Sho and the chair he was sitting in. “Fluffy pink chairs? We’re a gang, not a fucking book club.”

“The chairs serve their purpose. They’re strong and rather comfortable too, so they will probably last for a decent amount of time,” Kazuo nodded, running his hand over the fluffy pink material again. Mitsuru had noticed Kazuo seemed somewhat… fascinated by the fluffiness, well, as fascinated as Kazuo could possibly be over something.

Mitsuru, while having found this weird, just let him be. If it made the Boss as happy as he managed to be, that was all that mattered.

“Yeah, Ryuhei,” Hiroshi said smugly. Ryuhei glared at him and prepared to say something back, when he noticed something that was incredibly upsetting.

There were four chairs. One for Kazuo, Hiroshi, Sho and Mitsuru… but there were five of them. He didn’t have a chair.

“Sho, where’s my chair?!” Ryuhei demanded to know. Sho shot him a smirk and only added to his anger, and decided to play the innocence card.

“Oh… I thought you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t get you one. You didn’t seem to like them anyway,” Sho leaned back in his chair, “we are a gang, after all, not a book club. Right?” Ryuhei clenched his fists.

“That… that’s not the point!” Ryuhei yelled. “For fucks sake, EVEN HIROSHI got a chair!” Sho let out an exaggerated gasp.

“ _Even Hiroshi?_ Wow, that’s not very nice thing to say about your friend,” Sho said, shaking his head. Hiroshi decided to play along, and pretended to be upset. Even Mitsuru let out a sound of disapproval. He didn’t like agreeing with Sho, but pissing off Ryuhei was too fun to miss out on. Kazuo was engrossed in a book again anyway.

“You know what I mean,” Ryuhei snapped. “It’s common knowledge no one likes Hiroshi. The Boss forgot he existed once.”

“He didn’t send me a friend request…” Hiroshi whined as he recalled the painful memory.

“You’re so rude, Ryuhei. _I_ like Hiroshi,” Sho said, keeping up his charade. Ryuhei just got angrier, and it was becoming harder to not laugh.

“You don’t. You’re just lying to make me feel worse,” Ryuhei shot back. Sho just rolled his eyes.

“You can get a chair for yourself at the town dump. They’ll have something for sure,” Sho said. Ryuhei glared at him again and turned to leave, but turned back for a moment to meet Hiroshi’s eye.

“I’m not coming with you. You just said no one likes me,” Hiroshi said, still in denial.

Ryuhei let out a sound of fury and then stormed off in the direction of the town dump, trying to ignore the laughter he could hear behind him. He walked across the field as fast as he possibly could, telling himself that whatever chair he could find at the dump would be a hundred, no, a _thousand_ times better than Sho’s shitty chairs. They’d all want _his_ awesome chair.

As if it couldn’t get any worse, as Ryuhei finally got out of the field and onto the footpath, he noticed Mitsuko and her gang up ahead. Clearly able to tell he was angry, Mitsuko couldn’t resist the urge to irritate him more.

“Our place is looking pretty good, isn’t it?” Mitsuko said. “Now that we’ve gotten rid of Kiriyama’s name on the wall and the giant picture of him on the wall that the idiots forgot to dump.”

Ryuhei’s fists clenched. They… they just couldn’t get rid of the Kazuo picture! It had taken Sho _weeks_ to paint it and get it right, and while he was angry at the guy, he could just not stand by and just listen to someone so openly speak about the destruction of great art. Before he could cut in though, Hirono spoke.

“And that weird ass shirt with Numai’s face on it,” Hirono smirked. Ryuhei couldn’t contain himself.

“WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY MITSURU SHIRT?” Ryuhei shouted.

“Oh, Kuronaga, right? Didn’t see you there,” Mitsuko said, noticing that he got even more annoyed once he was mistaken for _Hiroshi,_ of all people. “That was your shirt? I think we burned it if I can remember correctly. Right, Yoshimi?”

Yoshimi was trailing behind them, frantically texting Yoji as per usual. Mitsuko walked over to her, grabbed her phone out of her hand, and flung it across the field, completely out of sight. Yoshimi gasped, and immediately began to weep.

“That was the third phone in a month…” Yoshimi said in utter disbelief.

“That’s why you carry around one of these bricks when you’re around her,” Hirono held up her Mitsuko-proof second phone, an incredibly old thing that surprisingly still worked. Yoshimi’s face lit up.

“Ooh! Can I use it to text Yoji back?” Yoshimi beamed.

“Fuck off,” Hirono walked off to catch up with Mitsuko.

Ryuhei left before they could mention the destruction of his Mitsuru shirt again, attempting to hide the sound of his weeping. It didn’t work.

 

Slowly but surely, the Kiriyama family got used to their new clubhouse. Sho actually thought it had some sort of charm to it, Hiroshi was still grateful he had his own personalised chair, Ryuhei loved his chair (he had to sit on the other side of the shelter due to the stink from the dump), and even Kazuo had called the clubhouse decent once. If the Boss was happy, Mitsuru was happy, so it all worked out perfectly.

The loss of their clubhouse had taught them an important, heartwarming lesson about using what they had, and they wouldn’t forget this loss ever. Sho even thought it brought all of them, save for Ryuhei, closer together, which was absolutely beautiful. It had almost made him cry, but he held his tears back as best as he could. He could only imagine what Mitsuru and Ryuhei would say if he cried over their bonding.

It had been about two weeks since the had moved into the clubhouse now, and the Kiriyama family all sat around with pizza, looking out at the field. Ryuhei wished they had a TV to watch, but Hiroshi had dropped and broken the old TV they’d hauled up to the clubhouse several days ago. It was a prime Hiroshi moment.

Mitsuru looked away from Kazuo, who was eating his pizza with a knife and fork, for one moment to see three figures walking onto the field. The three of them were carrying plastic chairs Ryuhei recognised from his trip to the town dump.

“You just HAD to get us evicted, didn’t you?!” The familiar voice of Hirono filled their ears.

“It’s your fault, you idiot!” Mitsuko immediately shot back, slamming her chair down on the grass.

“Guys, we can make this work!” Yoshimi insisted, taking a seat on her own chair.

Sho smirked as Hirono and Mitsuko continued to argue, grabbing another slice of pizza. _That was what you got for stealing Kazuo-kun’s place,_ he thought to himself.

A loud clap of thunder caught their attention several minutes later, Hiroshi being pushed to the ground after attempting to jump into Ryuhei’s lap out of fright. It began to pour with rain. Mitsuru smiled slightly, remembering how smart Kazuo had been. If they didn’t have Kazuo, they’d all be sitting in the rain right now, all their stuff ruined. Kazuo was the greatest.

“FUCK!” Mitsuko screamed as the three began to get soaked with rain. Hirono grabbed an umbrella from her bag and sheltered herself and Yoshimi from the rain, getting up to leave. When Mitsuko tried to get under it, she pushed her away, and she landed on the wet ground.

Hirono and Yoshimi quickly walked away together under their umbrella, and the Kiriyama family watched as Mitsuko got up, cussed them out for a few minutes, before realising that she was absolutely soaked and should probably go and grab an umbrella herself. They watched as she set eyes on Kyoichi, who was walking home, umbrella in tow, and quickly snatched it from his hands.

“GREAT. JUST GREAT. I CAN’T EVEN HAVE MY OWN UMBRELLA NOW, CAN I?!” Kyoichi yelled up at the sky as Mitsuko walked off.

The Kiriyama family, save for Kazuo, continued to laugh at the whole display they had just witnessed. Sho wished he could have filmed it, but he had been caught up in the moment. It had definitely been something class meme-worthy.

Being evicted hadn’t been so bad after all.


	2. BONUS: Evicted - Kyoichi Edition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evicted again, this time through the eyes of Kyoichi Motobuchi. Why can't he just have his own umbrella?

Evicted: Kyoichi Edition

It only took two weeks for Kyoichi Motobuchi’s life to change. It wasn’t in a good way either. The change had made his world stop at a standstill, make him feel as if his life was empty, and that he’d never feel like himself again. As he sat in his room sobbing, still having no idea what to do about the horrific situation, he composed himself enough to decide he wanted to take action.

Wiping his tears away, he climbed out of bed, dodging the mass of tissues spread around him, walking over to his desk, where he grabbed an old notebook. He turned to a fresh, blank page and grabbed his favourite pen, and started by writing out the date. He’d heard that writing your feelings down on paper was a good way of dealing with them (which was usually Mr. Hayashida speak for ‘please don’t beat each other up, children’; no one listened), and while he thought it was the dumbest thing ever, he decided that for now, he’d try it.

He was going to write about the event that sent his world tumbling into anarchy. It only took two weeks, and now, nothing would ever be the same. Someone would read this one day and weep for him. He was sure of it. As he began to write out his tale, he wept for himself. It was the saddest story ever told, he thought, and even had to stop after the first line, which was _‘I am Kyoichi Motobuchi…’_ to weep for himself for another full hour.

However, after that, he was ready, and he truly began to tell his story. It was time. He was Kyoichi Motobuchi, a sad fifteen year old whose world had been turned upside down, and it was time to tell his story.

\----

The day where the changes began was an ordinary one. Kyoichi awoke early, studied, got ready for school, continued to study as he ate breakfast, mumbled a ‘good morning’ to his parents in between reading through study notes, then walked to school, getting there at an early time to, you guessed it, study. This was his usual routine, only this morning, it was somewhat interrupted. It was the first sign something was wrong, but at the time, he didn’t know it.

Satomi Noda, another major studier and his second biggest competition in the ninth grade (second to only Kazuo Kiriyama, who they both barely ever managed to beat), was _sitting in his seat_. Head buried in her notebook, not a care in the world, was Satomi, sitting on _his_ silver seat. No one sat in _his seat._ He was sure she was sitting there just so she could mess with him, try to get him off-balance before the upcoming exam. Her evil plan was not going to work.

Really, there was no ulterior motive for Satomi sitting in the seat. Haruka and Yukie were away at a volleyball game, Izumi was sick, Noriko had gone off with Shuya, and their other friends weren’t around yet. She hadn’t wanted to sit alone in her usual spot and look pathetic, so she’d just picked the first spot she’d found that seemed relatively quiet, which coincidently had been Kyoichi’s seat.

“This is my spot, Noda,” Kyoichi frowned, walking over to her. He crossed his arms and waited for her to move.

Slowly, Satomi looked up at him, right into his eyes. She suddenly slammed her book shut so loudly Kyoichi screamed and jumped back, then shot him the absolute scariest look that he’d ever seen in his fifteen years. Without waiting for her answer, he ran off, missing how a smile returned to her face before she went back to reading. _Seriously,_ he thought to himself, _she scares me at times._

Eventually, Kyoichi found a seat, but it was beside a trash can. With a look of disgust on his face, he took a seat beside it, and took out his notebook. Before he could start studying, however, he saw Ryuhei Sasagawa walk by, and upon seeing him sitting with a trash can, stopped to point and laugh at him. Hiroshi Kuronaga shuffled over to Ryuhei and joined in, but Ryuhei seemed to be annoyed with his presence, pushed him away, and Hiroshi quickly left.

Ryuhei continued to laugh at him on his own for what felt like forever.

Kyoichi tried to ignore the fact his face was turning crimson, and buried his face in his notebook. He sighed in relief when Ryuhei finally went away, and hoped he would avoid him for the rest of the day. The rest of his life would be more preferable, but he knew it wouldn’t be practical, and he doubted Ryuhei would leave him alone in a hurry. Instead, he could only hope that the day wouldn’t get any worse.

He couldn’t be more wrong.

\---

That day, they had to do speeches. Kyoichi was sure that meant the end of his bad luck. He was good at speeches. Even _Kazuo Kiriyama_ couldn’t beat him when they did speeches. He liked speeches even more than he liked completing worksheets… and that was a lot. He was good at them, and everyone was forced to listen to him for up to five minutes, which no one did unless they were forced, save for his parents on the rare times they weren’t busy. It was the best combination.

Sadly today, probably due to his bad luck, Yukie Utsumi beat him when the teacher asked for volunteers to go first, and he was forced to listen to her speech first up, but for the most part, he could drown her out. All he had to do was think of how amazing his own was, and it was over before he knew it. When the teacher asked who would go next, he jumped out of his seat before Satomi could volunteer to go next, and started to make his way to the front.

Unfortunately, to get to the front, he had to go past Mitsuko Souma’s desk. Since her day had began with her making the Kiriyama family bar Kazuo completely miserable, she wanted to continue to make as many people as miserable as possible. It was a bet with Hirono, and she was determined to win. When Kyoichi walked past her, she held her leg out and tripped him.

Kyoichi let out a shriek, his cards going everywhere. Narrowly missing hitting his head on a desk, he fell to the ground. Several people didn’t bother to hide their laughter.

He looked up at Mitsuko, noticing that several of his cards had landed on her desk. He watched as with a smirk on her face, she pretended to knock over her water bottle, and his cards were toast. Kyoichi immediately launched into the performance of a lifetime, shrieking hysterically over his cards and yelling that if he hit the table, he could have died.

Unfortunately, his shrieking was no match for Mitsuko’s death glare, and the teacher mumbled to Kyoichi that it was probably just a mistake, and that next time, he should watch his feet. He’d almost cried. He was given two days to redo his speech, and while he was sure he could do it, he was still absolutely heartbroken. He didn’t want to be one of the _last people_ to do his speech! It was a tragedy. A disaster… but he hadn’t seen anything yet.

Once school was over, he decided not to go home just yet. He wasn’t ready – he didn’t want to go inside and be asked how his day was. He just couldn’t do it. He still hadn’t fully accepted how bad the day was. Instead, he’d decided to go his favourite study spot – well, the study spot he’d found after being banned from the library (every time he went there, the same kid would make fun of him and irritate him to no end, and when he finally snapped and yelled at him, he’d been kicked out), an old, abandoned café/shelter area near a field not too far from Shiroiwa Junior High School.

Kyoichi took a seat in the corner – really, if he kept coming here if he was too scared to ever go back to the library, he should get some chairs for the place, and took out his homework. It would probably take him only fifteen minutes at most to complete, and he would be able to do it in peace and tranquillity too. Quickly, he began to complete the worksheet, a smile on his face while doing so.

About five problems into the worksheet, he began to hear voices in the distance. He dismissed it at first – it was probably just someone walking home from school, someone harmless like Yoshio Akamatsu or Tatsumichi Oki – the Souma gang or the Kiriyama family had never walked by the field before. The universe had to let him be lucky in this regard today at the very least.

Unfortunately, several minutes later, the entirety of the Kiriyama family stood before him, in _his_ study spot. Before he could stop himself, he gave them all a glare, gripping his worksheet tightly. No matter what happened, he was determined to leave with his worksheet still legible and intact. The universe had to let him at least have _that_ but of luck, right?

Ryuhei stepped forward – just his luck, of course it had to be _Ryuhei_ , right? He gave him a smug smile and went to snatch his worksheet, but Kyoichi jumped away as if Ryuhei had tried to burn him. He was not going to get his worksheet. He was sure of it.

“Hey, nerd,” Ryuhei began, “this is our place now. Beat it.”

Kyoichi was going to argue at first, as he was already in a bad mood over his bad luck and how much the day had sucked, but ultimately decided against it. He decided he’d leave with shattered dignity and an intact worksheet. The Kiriyama family could crush him on a normal day, let alone one where he was having the world’s worst luck. He stuffed his notebook in his bag, taking care with the worksheet, and then stalked off.

Breathing in the fresh air, Kyoichi stalked across the field. Now that he was far enough away from the Kiriyama family, he felt confident enough to say what was exactly on his mind.

“All I want is one quiet place. ONE. ONE. Is that too much to ask?!”

It was safe to say no one cared at all about Kyoichi’s rant. All he had to do was hope his bad luck didn’t continue tomorrow. It was a horrible day, and one he wished to never repeat.

\---

To his relief, Kyoichi’s bad luck mostly went away after that day. He got to do his speech again, and despite going towards the end, got the highest mark in the class, the Kiriyama family were too busy arguing amongst themselves (Kazuo, of course, not caring, just sitting beside them with a book as they all fought) to go after him, though unfortunately, they were there to stay in his place – that was what gave him the confidence to finally go back to the library. He wasn’t banned anymore! To make it even better, that kid hadn’t made an appearance at the library since his return either.

It was a Friday afternoon, and Kyoichi was heading to the library to start his weekend in the way he deemed the right way – by studying. He was walking across the field where the Kiriyama family’s clubhouse now was, what used to be his study spot, trying to ignore the voices he could hear around him. At least they weren’t talking to him – that was rather lucky, but he wasn’t complaining.

Even when thunder clapped and rain poured, he still didn’t think it was the end of his good luck. He reached into his bag, and pulled out Desmond. Desmond had been his trusty umbrella since a rainy day at the beginning of the eighth grade, named after the first name he found in a book that was laying in the street outside the store he bought it from. Desmond was bright green, and looked like a frog, and was probably Kyoichi’s only friend.

People said he was weird, dumb even. Kyoichi didn’t care. Obviously, they were just jealous of his friendship with Desmond.

For awhile, Kyoichi walked merrily along, his only friend saving him from the rain and giving him the company he desired. He was painfully oblivious to the fact that in a few minutes, the moment where his world truly shattered would occur, and he would never be the same again. As he retold the story in his notebook, he began to cry as he got up to this part. Still, he pushed himself to continue, and he picked up his pen again.

Upon hearing something behind him, Kyoichi turned around. He turned to see some sort of monster, covered in mud and dripping wet from head to toe, black and red dripping down its face, coming towards him. He screamed, and almost dropped Desmond on the ground. When the monster started coming closer, he realised, while screaming louder, that it wasn’t a monster, but in fact _Mitsuko Souma,_ who had apparently gotten caught in the rain and fallen over. What could she possibly want with him?

It was only when she snatched it out of his hands he realised… _she wanted Desmond._

As she walked off, holding Desmond tightly, Kyoichi’s world stopped. He saw Desmond rapidly disappear, in the clutches of one of the scariest people he’d ever met. How on Earth was he supposed to get his friend back?!

In the mean time, however, Kyoichi was angry, and needed to let it out.

“GREAT. JUST GREAT. I CAN’T EVEN HAVE MY OWN UMBRELLA NOW, CAN I?!”

At the sound of the Kiriyama family laughing loudly in their shelter, he began to sob. He looked over, Desmond out of sight. He sobbed even harder.

“I’ll get you back Desmond… I promise.”

 


End file.
